From The Reader's Modem To The Advertiser's Ear

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Jan 1, 2004

Byline: Jillian S. Ambroz

It's a sweltering August day in Las Vegas and Janis Gaudelli, senior manager of trendspotter marketing for Teen People magazine, strolls the vast floor of Magic, an apparel trade show. Gaudelli, who spent six years in the fragrance industry researching teen consumers before joining Time Inc., is flanked by a posse of six teenagers: four girls and two boys. When they discover a must-have item among the belts and accessories, they slap on a Hot Pick sticker. The next day, 400 fashionistas and marketers furiously scribble notes as the kids tell what they like and why. After 45 minutes, Gaudelli swoops down like a den mother to spirit away Teen People's most valuable assets. This data is too good to give away.

Gaudelli's trendspotters represent a new and potentially important twist on reader research. Her legions - 12,000 young adults from 13 to 24 - are the ultimate feedback machine, providing instant input on what's hot and what's suddenly passe. At a time when advertisers are looking for intimate detail about audiences, this type of research could make the traditional focus group and reader panel seem like, so 2000.

The key advantage is immediacy. Gaudelli is in constant touch with her volunteers via Instant Messaging and, on average, 500 daily e-mails. She mines the reports from these influential adolescents to feed ideas to editors and provide buying-habit information to advertisers.

How much the trendspotters have contributed to the success of six-year-old Teen People (the No. 1 teen book - with a 7.2 million audience according to MRI Teenmark data) is difficult to gauge. But Gaudelli says that her department, which has been part of the franchise from the start and she says is now a revenue producer, touches every part of the magazine's operation.

What Gaudelli can measure is how far ahead of the curve her cool hunters are. They spotted Norah Jones a year before she cleaned up at the Grammys. And they were I.M-ing about Nokia's N-Gage game player/phone six months before it launched.

That kind of insight is invaluable to marketers trying to stand out in a sea of consumer choices, says Cheryl Wilbur, director of research and brand development for Time Inc.'s Parenting Group, which uses similar reader interaction. The constant contact with thousands of consumers, Wilbur says, provides reach, speed and bang for the buck that traditional methods can't match.

Wilbur's own virtual research army, the Mom Connection, consists of 8,000 parents she reaches weekly via the Internet and email. The data she gathers is sliced and diced for internal and client needs. "With focus groups, after you've spent tens of thousands of dollars, you've only spoken to a couple of scores of people," she says. And by the time you finish a traditional mail-in survey, several buying seasons may have past, she adds. "This gives you scope and magnitude and reach, but it has the immediacy and texture of focus groups. We call it focus groups on steroids."

Like Gaudelli's trendspotters, members of the Mom Connection are not just readers, which gives the research added credibility. "Clients go berserk over this," says Wilbur. "They love that it's not just a view of our readers; it's market-based, and it's so big. Advertisers feel more comfortable making million-dollar decisions when the information they have comes from a wider cut."

Playtex, for example, signed up for Mom Connection research because the company can parse the data according to the consumer's age and separate first-time versus experienced mothers. Playtex is using the data in product development and for crafting its marketing messages, Wilbur says. Another client, Chrysler Corp., used the Mom Connection instead of creating its own panel of young mothers, she says.

The direct approach can also work for business-to-business publications. For many years, InfoWorld magazine has used email surveys to gather data on buying intentions from readers. But this past fall, it began asking open-ended questions in lengthier email surveys to gather qualitative research. The process has proved more effective in forecasting trends than focus groups, says Paul Calento, InfoWorld's vice president of marketing. In particular, he says, the new research is far better for determining long-term trends, which is valuable to his clients. "The problem with focus groups is that it's hard for these folks to visualize what they need 10 to 12 months from now," he says. "Now we do that."

Will this new online research render the traditional two-way-mirror model obsolete? Probably not. But anything that provides greater segment analysis and detailed psychographics is a welcome improvement for advertisers, says Neil Ascher, executive vice president and director of communication services for Zenith Optimedia. "Focus groups are helpful in very broad terms. But it's kind of hard to have everything rest on the head of 10 people sitting around a room," he says. "There's always a strange dynamic of who speaks up and who doesn't. I'm not sure I'd make a lot of media decisions based on a focus group."